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Thursday, September 10, 2015

The two white beams memorializing the lost towers cut diagonally across the sky. On the empty white panel of a broken phone booth someone has scrawled "Free Kim Davis". And on another one and another one following someone's zigzag route through the East Village's maze of hipster joints.

This is the America we live in now.

We will spend 9/11 debating the merits of letting a terror state that helped the 9/11 hijackers go nuclear. #PeaceWins #LoveWins. The heat and humidity is broken by a thunderstorm. The faint lights vanish behind the clouds.

History must have grown tired of repeating itself because no one talks about it. That old kind of news has become a formality. Our news is a crazed jumble of Kardashians, pet videos and social justice outrages. Media is an ADD lifestyle section where all the outrages that matter are petty.

The big stuff, wars, moon landings, civilizations, doesn't matter. Everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator of personal insecurities masquerading as politics and entertainment reduced to fame for fame's sake celebrities. All of it is calculated to match the workday routine of a twenty-something female college graduate working in media. Because that is mostly who writes it.

Today's Time or Washington Post make the old Entertainment Tonight look like serious journalism.

What used to be the media is a Tumblr of someone's favorite TV shows, celebrities, cat gifs and outrages of the moment. Its grasp of politics does not extend beyond its hashtag. Beneath its old fonts and styles is a jumble of social justice warrior phrases of political destruction.

Enemies are "Called out" in tweets and "Destroyed" by viral videos starring failed comedians. These enemies engage in futile "Freakouts", but are promptly destroyed once more by someone's abused three-year old who is encouraged to recite their support for trannies, eliminating borders or banning plastic bags by their pierced off-camera Munchhausen progressive politics-by-proxy stage mothers.

Then the failed comedians say something "Problematic" and are "Called Out" in turn and "Destroyed". Until it is learned that those who called them out have their own "Problematic" history and are "Called Out" and "Destroyed" by the fleas who live upon the fleas of the American dog. And so it must be until there is no one left to call out or destroy.

These are the wars we fight now. Share if you agree. You will be amazed at how we nailed losing 9/11. How these formal memorials perfectly capture the experience of losing a war to terrorists and their leftist allies will bring tears to your eyes. What happens next is not what you think. But mostly it's exactly what you think. It's wasted time, wasted minds and wasted lives.

This isn't America. It's just the occupied space where its culture used to be. It's a depersonalized culture of personalities. Its frivolity inversely proportional to the despair of its consumers. But it's also the America we live in now. It is the arrogance of its rulers, the mindless maze of their minds and the inner despair of their hearts.

Politics and pop culture are only a few of the mirrors of that despair. The Weimar Germany cabaret pop stars celebrating the end of an empire with the destruction of its culture and the politicians glorying in their liberation from any common covenants and lawful limitations are symptoms.

There is still a nation under the shadow of that despair struggling to be reborn, but it does not know how. Its culture is occupied. Its lines of communication are hijacked by frauds and crazies. It has learned that its good intentions count for nothing and so it has learned despair instead.

This is the America we live in now.

Its common currency is contempt. Hope was a fraud. Hate is real. Every enemy of social justice destroyed makes the world a better place. Anger is righteous. Knowledge is meaningless.

9/11 has no place in this world. It's a puzzle piece that doesn't fit between the cat videos and the Kardashians. There's way to social justice it up. It's the elephant in the room. Steel and fire. A rain of ash. Falling corpses. People fleeing past coffee places. Panicked cops shouting wildly.

It's the end of the world. And the world we have built carefully insulates its consumers from the knowledge of its own shocking fragility. Its algorithms pile on distractions, feeding mass media to mobile phones in techniques garnered from casino slot machines. Buttons are pushed. Shallow momentary emotions are felt. Families fall apart. Civilizations fall apart.

The 9/11 lights cut across a night sky, but they can't stop the weapons of mass distraction. They are a futile protest against a memory hole big enough to swallow that terrible day and all it meant.

Despair at its utmost becomes celebration. When there is nothing more to live for, nothing more to hope for, life becomes momentary, its fragmentation an escape from the future, its purpose impossible to grasp, its contradictions easily escapable and its end, impossible to conceive of.

In despair, destruction becomes celebration. When the solutions are difficult, they must be destroyed. When they remind us of how low we have fallen, they must be denounced. These acts are joyful because they liberate the destroyers from responsibility and accountability. They free them from hope. They offer them an imaginary future that lacks the difficulties of the real one.

The only religion at the heart of Islam is a deep despair, in humanity and its own civilization. Its truest expression is the purposeful destructiveness of ISIS. But it has always been what Islam is. That despair is just as present in the heart of the left. Theirs is not the despair of the savage confronted with moral creeds, with empathy and nobility that beggar him, or with technologies that mock him. Theirs is the despair of the egotistical idealist who would rather destroy the world than tolerate its flaws. It is the despair of tyrants that hardens to a cynical amused brutality at the exercise of power.

Our civilization is coming apart.

There have always been many Americas, but they are infinitely fragmenting. The culture that aspires to bond them together has become an insane egotistical monster trying to survive its own crippling insecurities with the personal destruction of others. Millions walk away from it, but have nowhere to go. They tell their own isolated stories on islands of social media, scrawl things on walls and howl at the night. They feel a sense of infinite loneliness at the nation and the culture coming apart.

This is the America we live in now.

We don't have to give in to despair. If we do, we are lost. Lost the way that the left is lost. Lost the way that the Muslim world is lost.

We are not savages and feral children. We are the inheritors of a great civilization. It is still ours to lose. It is ours to keep if we understand its truths.

We are not alone. A sense of isolation has been imposed on us as part of a culture war. The task of reconstructing our civilization and ending that isolation begins with our communication. We are the successors of revolutions of ideas. We need to do more than keep them alive. We must refresh them and renew them. And, most importantly, we must practice them.

We are not this culture. We are not our media. We are not our politicians. We are better than that.

We must win, but we must also remember what it is we hope to win. If we forget that, we lose. If we forget that, we will embrace dead end policies that cannot restore hope or bring victory.

What we have now is not a movement because we have not defined what it is we hope to win. We have built reactive movements to stave off despair. We must do better than that. We must not settle for striving to restore some idealized lost world. Instead we must dream big. We must think of the nation we want and of the civilization we want to live in and what it will take to build it.

Our enemies have set out big goals. We must set out bigger ones. We must become more than conservatives. If we remain conservatives, then all we will have is the America we live in now. And even if our children and grandchildren become conservatives, that is the culture and nation they will fight to conserve. We must become revolutionaries.

We must think in terms of the world we want. Not the world we have lost.

26
comments:

"...the civilization we want to live in and what it will take to build it."

I think that "what it will take to build it" may be a ban on both Islam and leftism. Each reinforces the other. Each is utterly destructive.

"Oh", I hear people say "but that goes against freedom." Maybe it does, but do you really want to let the weeds of Islam and leftism grow in the "garden of freedom"? Isn't one instance of these things destroying our civilisation enough? I believe that it is.

"We must think in terms of the world we want." I agree wholeheartedly. The world *I* want is a world free of Islam and leftism.

The real tragedy this anniversary day of 9/11 is that the terrorists achieved everything they wanted with the attacks. The goal was to draw the US into a war in the Middle East in which it would be defeated and then crumble from within, clearing the path for the rapid expansion of radical Islam. America didn't have to crumble, but the social trends that began with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's added to the creation of the welfare/nanny state mentality of endless entitlement made fulfilling of Bin Laden's dream possible. In the 1930's both the Japanese and Germans made the fatal mistake of thinking Americans were only interested in a life of luxury and entertainment and would not fight back. They were proven wrong. However, that America doesn't exist any more. Bin Laden made the same wager but it looks like it is paying off, not for him personally,but for his ideological successors in Teheran, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood and all the rest of the terror gangs. Is there an answer to all of this?

We are seeing the mass media destroyed.in this process. Why is that bad?We are seeing the political parties being destroyed. Why is that bad?We are seeing all the props of a rotten system being pulled out..The cancer is being cut out...the patient may survive. But without the operation death was a certainty.

Exceptional writing, as usual, Daniel. I wish I felt that revolution could turn this around. But, historically speaking, revolution is only brought about when evil has accomplished its worst. A nation of people more concerned with the best way to take a selfie than what its government is doing is ripe for having the worst done to it but hasn’t felt it yet. The signs are there, but no one is paying attention. The evil that has taken over, not just this country but globally, is largely invisible anyway. How do you fight an enemy you cannot see?

It’s time to do some personal assessing. Get right, find strength that comes from knowing who you serve and where you are going when this mess is a vague memory.

What a brilliant, beautiful brain you’ve got. Thank God our fragile world includes such a sound mind (yours), infusing it with such a generous dose of wisdom on this anniversary of sickness and despair. I am truly grateful you exist, and that you work so hard, as I have benefited directly from the grace and understanding inherent in your prolific writings. Your work has increased my comprehension of the swirling, subversive forces tearing at our world; it has empowered me to be better. I agree with all you’ve said here, and look forward to more.

Now: supremacists and mastermind micro-managers-- to the left please, freedom loving conservatives standing tall and firm on the basis that yes, Israel deserves and has AT MINIMUM the right to exist-- to the right. It’s on like Donkey Kong. Let’s have an honest discussion folks. (At least this is my spontaneous, rough draft version of my revolutionary world-I-want plan, one devoid of the vacuous, fake ‘wars’ and chatter of the current one).

This is my first visit to Sultan Knish, although it will most definitely not be my last. (Frontpagemag fan- you might recognize my verbose, sentimental ramblings from there under the handle of a Michelangelo quote)

Every sick culture needs an equal (or more than equal) and opposite culture to defeat it. There still seems to be some reservoir of sane Americans, although few are in our national government, universities, or media.

Amidst America's , and the world's, cultural unwinding, what remains to want? After the America Dream made Hobbes' solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short existence a memory, after our American ideals enabled unimagined beneficial outcomes to happen, what do you do? The American struggle was ideological, not an expression of an intended physical outcome. America never had a plan. Freedom, future unpredictable choices, cannot by their nature be planned.

But the Left captured the machineries of government throughout the land. In every state, county and town they installed planners to control what Americans could do next. They run things now.

And it turns out that the Pleasantville they've planned and implemented inspires as much revulsion and counter culture as it does conformity.

So get real. It's not enough to call for a rebirth. The revolution we need must put a whole class of planning, statute writing, bureaucrats in the street alongside the rest of us.

And they are not going to leave their sheltered empowered government offices without a fight.

Bad enough that western liberals make common cause with radical Islam, but most professional conservatives are careerists who feel no need to act in any way except to advance their careers. I know a few and they have no actual ideology beyond self aggrandizement and narcissism, except for the Christian conservatives who are, if anything, worse. None of these will help advance the revolution we will have to endure, thus the day of reckoning is put off even further. James Burnham wrote in 1964: “Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” but we have an even more malignant idea percolating through the zeitgeist, a lust for personal gratification that overwhelms any regard for the common good.

Thank you Daniel, for all you do. I never doubt that what you write comes from your heart.

Nice sentiments everybody. And as usual Daniel, another excellent though depressing article. I've also read your other more uplifting articles here and your stuff over at Frontpage.

May I suggest another approach. In the movie Man For All Seasons, Cardinal Woosley told Sir Thomas Moore, regarding his opposition to the Kings divorce, in addition to prayer (Moore's approach), there is effort.

Well, effort is needed here. There is a storm coming. A very bad one. One look at Europe tells you all you need to know. A Muslim storm, a race storm, and a totalitarian leftist storm. A perfect storm of misery.

I suggest arming up and prepping up. Buy a weapon or two if you live in a state where you can, buy ammo, store emergency food and water.

The civil society is going to collapse and the police won't be there. You will be on your own.

I don't wanna be the Huckleberry who pisses in the flowerpot, but I think this post should be like one of those letters we write but never send. It's important to express our thoughts, and equally important to keep those thoughts to ourselves. Here's the two reasons why:

1) nobody on the 'Net ever lost an audience by telling their readers Americans are stupid (and the Kardashians are usually mentioned as a shorthand meme). Of course nobody in the readership ever thinks they're among the stupid, it's always those OTHER Americans. It's not only divisive, it's not true.

I've never seen the Kardashians show since I don't get ... what, E Network? ... and everybody commenting on this site seems pretty smart to me. Let's stop makin' our bones by dissing our fellow citizens. Just because things aren't like they'd be if we were King, doesn't mean everybody's a stupid poopyhead. Half of America never voted for the guy (y'all know who I mean).

And (2) there's a format for a great speech, and a different format for a great post. This is a great speech, I can virtually see you at the podium rallying the troops with this.

But speeches are poetry in rhetorical form, while great posts have facts -- dates, interconnections, opportunities for the reader to assemble the data to corroborate the author's conclusions. This post has none of those things. No new light is shed, just a repetition of our disastrous era. Like we haven't seen that on ten different blogs already today.

I know I probably come off as a curmudgeon, and I apologize. I keep coming to Knish because I'm such a fan of your insights; you've actually made me think about things in a whole new way on many of your posts. But this isn't one of those posts.

It's 70 years since the end of WWII. A generation. Germany killed six million Jews, 5 million dissidents, Catholics, Roma, gays, the mentally and physically impaired. Nazis made refugees, (real refugees, not those looking for the best basket of benefits) out of millions more. And now, a generation later, Angela Merkel is committing national suicide. Part of me thinks it's ironic that this xenophobic country will itself be destroyed by hundreds of thousands of Muslims who will rape their blonde blue eyed women and turn the country's cultural institutions upside down. Part of me knows that in a decade Europe will become Eurabia. The lines on the map are being redrawn again. There is no more Syria, Iraq or Yemen. Lebanon ceased to exist 30 years ago. And the same is happening in Europe. But another part of me understands that God has a plan. We might not like the outcome. There will be bloodshed and devastation. But we must be prepared. With guns, ammo, food, water and medical supplies. And prayer. Rosh Hashanah is tomorrow night. It's not just the Jews who are judged. It's the world. Who will live. And who will die. It's not in our hands. It's in God's.

"We must become more than Conservatives.." I confess I am a Tea-Partier, 6 years now. I do get a certain satisfaction from working to elect politicians that are Conservative, but getting kicked in the teeth from people like McConnell is really getting old, to be honest. And to tell you the truth, I never really expected any different anyway. I am a long-time observer of American politics, and it's consistent move toward the left, and I am finally getting to the point where I agree with Ann Barnhardt, that one must be a sociopath to even run for elected office.

So to hell with it. One must find enjoyment where possible, gather with friends and family, and make the best of it. And drink lots of good wine. And maybe when things get real bad, at least we'll have firearms, and the knowledge that the people who created this mess will be in South America, and we can get back to business.

Oh, and Savage hates the word Conservative. After watching what my Tea party has degenerated into, a bunch of nice people seriously considering Rubio or Trump for President, I can't disagree.

In the pantheon of izlamic atrocities, 9-11 is barely a bump in the road. Between 2.5 and 3 million Hindus were slaughtered in Bangladesh (and thousands of Hindu women raped) by muslims in the early 1970's while George Harrison et. al. sang Give Peace a Chance in Kashmir (where ethnic cleansing of non-muslims is now almost complete).

Once again -- a heartfelt call for action and a vivid assessment of the perilous time we're in. What to do? Yes, be prepared for one and be steadfast in your faith for another--a faith based community that hasn't been hollowed out by the social justice/PC niceties of our age will go far in sustaining you, and then remain alert to the lies and propaganda and don't let them lure you. Give up television; don't read another word about the Kardashians, and stop turning away in silence when your friends and acquaintances parrot the lies they've learned from the mass media. Pray for an honest leader who can give a voice to what all of us are feeling, and remember that there are millions that agree with you. Keep reminding us, Daniel, what is at stake, and never feel like you are a lonely voice calling in the wilderness.

"I don't wanna be the Huckleberry who pisses in the flowerpot, but I think this post should be like one of those letters we write but never send. It's important to express our thoughts, and equally important to keep those thoughts to ourselves. Here's the two reasons why:"

I don't remember that book, but I think you're talking to yourself a bit here, Greenfield was sensational as usual here.

"1) nobody on the 'Net ever lost an audience by telling their readers Americans are stupid (and the Kardashians are usually mentioned as a shorthand meme). Of course nobody in the readership ever thinks they're among the stupid, it's always those OTHER Americans. It's not only divisive, it's not true."

So you imply that DG is calling Americans stupid because many are obsessed with Kardashians? I can take from his comments that people that are obsessed with the Kardashians are stupid, not all Americans. As for "OTHER" Americans, if you don't want to hang around people like that, read here and stay away from Alex Jones and the other PaulBot™ programmers. Calling some Americans dumb isn't calling all Americans dumb, and the fact he wrote this implies that he doesn't think all Americans are dumb, because you have to be smart to understand what he's saying.

"I've never seen the Kardashians show since I don't get ... what, E Network? ... and everybody commenting on this site seems pretty smart to me. Let's stop makin' our bones by dissing our fellow citizens. Just because things aren't like they'd be if we were King, doesn't mean everybody's a stupid poopyhead. Half of America never voted for the guy (y'all know who I mean)."

Maybe in the second election, there was less than half, but the first one clearly people were more than happy to put him in. That, same as calling the Kardashian obsessed dumb, doesn't imply that all Americans are dumb, it implies that Obama voters are dumb. Furthermore, he does make a profound social commentary in showing the dumbing down as a society as a whole. Maybe you think everyone in the states is hot stuff, but intellectuals around the world are laughing at you, CNN and your other news channels, FOX included sound like they were written for a grade-school audience to Canadians and Europeans. Granted, I may agree with what FOX says more times than not, and probably more than all your other media sources around, but the fact remains that teachers here stop presenting facts and arguments in that manner after the second grade, and you sell what people are buying, so yeah, as a whole American culture is dumbed down. It's like screaming "you saaaid all muuuuslims are teeeerorists!!" when someone says, "these people support terrorism", not all muslims can be terrorists, or their countries would fall apart (same deal with dumb people+America) but it's just as a whole, muslim culture is pro terrorism like American culture has become stupid.

"And (2) there's a format for a great speech, and a different format for a great post. This is a great speech, I can virtually see you at the podium rallying the troops with this."

I could also see just about any of DG's pieces as a speech, and I also thoroughly enjoy reading them. However, I wouldn't suggest reading them in a speech to less smart people, because they might miss some of the details.

"But speeches are poetry in rhetorical form, while great posts have facts -- dates, interconnections, opportunities for the reader to assemble the data to corroborate the author's conclusions. This post has none of those things. No new light is shed, just a repetition of our disastrous era. Like we haven't seen that on ten different blogs already today."

Sourcing this piece would be a nightmare. You'd have to link to all the big news websites and show hits to show that on 9/11, a massive number of Americans wanted to know just what the Kardashians were up to. Then you'd have to show a bunch of these social justice websites and their outrage of the day, and to avoid the inevitable dummie thinking they're right, you'd have to explain each of the sources away in precise detail. Then you could link to a few blogs to show a host of angry writers calling Americans stupid, and wondering what is wrong with the society, and then a ton of blogs that are furious because muslims are forced to serve alcohol that they agreed to serve, and that Kimmy talked down a style of clothing they like. I could go on, but if you want to source this, be my guest, this is a social commentary that I'd used as an abstract in a research paper, to actually source it and prove each point with examples would take a month, and then even less people would understand it.

I believe the primary message in this piece is one of pride, the opposite of insult. It's supposed to make people who love their country and want a rigorous society feel disgust at the current state of affairs, and not forget that this filth is not who they are, the USA had the most advanced and intellectual society for a while. Lest people think that is who are they are and identify with the dummies, he says right up top, this is not America, and what is America but its citizens?

"I know I probably come off as a curmudgeon, and I apologize. I keep coming to Knish because I'm such a fan of your insights; you've actually made me think about things in a whole new way on many of your posts. But this isn't one of those posts."

Second time you talk about yourself, and then you talk about Daniel Greenfield. I usually go ape on people who want to talk about me or how great they are when we're discussing ideas. I don't care if you're an angry person, or your arms are tied while you type this with your tongue in a padded cell. Here's a new way this article helps you see the world, the filth and stupidity embodied by Kardashian worship is not what America is, there are plenty of intelligent Americans, and the society they would like to see is being hijacked by leftists trying to make everyone dumb and decadent. You don't need to identify with it, demanding the culture change to what you want to be isn't insulting Americans, unless you identify with stupidity.

"AND STOP CALLING US STUPID!! - "

Compare that to the previous statement:

"you've actually made me think about things in a whole new way on many of your posts. But this isn't one of those posts.""

So you like Daniel Greenfield and his blog, you just believe that his posts all call Americans stupid and are therefore hateful and wrong, and should be stopped. You don't look like any of the things you said you might look like, you look like a dumb hater.

Kelli M."But speeches are poetry in rhetorical form, while great posts have facts -- dates, interconnections, opportunities for the reader to assemble the data to corroborate the author's conclusions. This post has none of those things. No new light is shed, just a repetition of our disastrous era. Like we haven't seen that on ten different blogs already today."

There is a difference between dialectic (basically logical argument) and rhetoric (emotional argument), as explained by Aristotle. Either can be used in speeches. Either can be used in articles. Each has its place. When do you use each one?

Depends on the audience.

Mr. Greenfield's audience does not need extensive cites. He tells them what they believe from their experience to be true. That the culture is an Occupier's Culture. That Liberty requires an informed citizenry, and cannot survive a miseducated citizenry that has been conditioned to obey its emotions. Etc. To cite and 'prove' these things would be a diversion here. On the Huffington Post - yeah, you couldn't start that way. But this ain't HuffPo.

Instead, Daniel cites what his audience "knows," and gets to the payload: how to think about the current situation. It is outside the standard party box, to be sure.

It is not outside current trends, if you look to the near horizon. And having claimed set his flag upon this hill, Daniel needs to take the next step soon: how to be a revolutionary against the Left, successfully, while being reconciled to Western values. Because the anti-Leftists on other hills nearby have concluded that the Left IS the West, or at least the logical and unstoppable endpoint of an unrestricted voting franchise. And can voting franchises ever be kept restricted? Meanwhile, robotics is making Marx's description of the crisis of capitalism plausible again, in a world where capital needs almost no labor.

So, Daniel is correct about the starting mentality. But the arguments you're all about to have are going to be deeper and wider than you think.

Stage 1 of your argument will be to prove (with dialectic and reason) that your argument against the Left isn't intellectually pointless. Which means thinking deeply, for the first time in decades, about what Western Civilization actually IS at its heart.

But rhetoric must lead people to the midset explained here first. Otherwise, the kind of fearless dialectic examination required of their own side will be impossible.

Incredible piece. Everyone in the world should read this to understand what is confronting America and attempting to storm its bastions. I fear the barbarians have had the gates to the city openned to them by the progressives within. They value nothing, imagine nothing, and hope for nothing except to destroy all they disagree with.

Just as the 60s gave us STDs, hippies, and drugs, Obama is giving us hopelessness and the prospect of balkanization in a third world sewer.